simile in 3 as those in 1 and 4 are explained above, stating clearly what two things are compared, and in what respect they are alike.

We shall need to be careful in order not to confuse the simile and the literal comparison.

Tom, like his brother Jack, is tall.

Here we speak in a perfectly literal way of two boys, Tom and Jack. The simile is a comparison of things belonging to entirely different classes:

That soldier was like a lion.

These things of different classes are brought together by the imagination because of a certain likeness.

Some of the quotations above contain a comparison and yet express no word of comparison (like, as, etc.). Number 2 means: She speaks words that hurt the spirit as poniards hurt the body. In 4 the youth is compared to the sea because he is full of energy and action. In 5 the pines are called "kings" because they stood in the forest as upright and stately as a royal person ("lordly," "majestic"); and their fall and passage to the river reminds the poet of the humiliating progress of vanquished and captive kings in the triumphal procession of a Roman emperor. These comparisons are called Metaphors. They differ from the simile in containing no word of comparison (like, as). An object of one class is called by a name literally belonging to an object of another class; one thing is spoken of in terms used literally for a thing quite different, the two things being brought together in the imagination of the writer by some point of resemblance.

A metaphor sometimes affects the diction of a writer for some lines. In 5 the words lordly, majestic, captive, shorn, hair, naked are brought into the poem because of the reference to kings, barbarian chieftains once dignified and powerful, now insulted and led in triumph behind the chariot of the conqueror.

The correct interpretation of the metaphor, like that of the simile, depends on the clear recognition of the point of likeness in the two things compared, which, in the metaphor as well as in the simile, must belong to different classes.

The metaphor is a stronger figure than the simile, because, being without the word of likeness, it is more condensed, and the interpretation of it requires greater concentration of thought. It is more stimulating to the imagination than the simile. However, even in the strongest passages, when a metaphor would not be perfectly clear, an author uses a simile. Sometimes a simile begins a comparison and a metaphor continues it, as in quotation 4; the maiden is compared in simile to a barge, and her lover in metaphor to the sea. The latter part of the poem continues the metaphor at some length, and also presents its reverse, comparing the ship to the maiden and the sea to her bridegroom.

A third figure of comparison is found, though it is much less common than simile and metaphor.

And first, with nicest skill and art,
Perfect and finished in every part,
A little model the Master wrought,
Which should be to the larger plan
What the child is to the man,

Its counterpart in miniature.

LONGFELLOW: The Building of the Ship.

Here is expressed not a likeness of qualities, as in simile and

metaphor, but a likeness of relations. We have an Analogy, which might be indicated by a proportion of four members:

the model: the ship:: the child: the man.

Another example is found in these lines from Longfellow's The Day is Done.

A feeling of sadness and longing
That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles rain.

Here the proportion is:

this feeling: sorrow:: mist: rain.

There is still a fourth figure of comparison. Read Bryant's poem called The Yellow Violet, and observe carefully the author's attitude toward nature. He applies to the violet terms that belong to human qualities and actions: modest, gentle, humble, smile. He speaks of spring as having hands and planting the violet, as if spring were a gardener. The sun, whose warm rays brought the flower into existence, is its parent, who feeds and cares for it and demands from it obedience ("bade"). The taller, gayer flowers are haughty and flaunting. Of all these objects Bryant speaks in terms belonging literally to creatures having life, intelligence, and personality. He personifies the violet, the other flowers, the sun, Spring; that is, he speaks of them as if they were persons. Other examples of Personification are:

The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Nature through all her works gave signs of woe.

- Isaiah 55:12.

· MILTON: Paradise Lost.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

- I Corinthians 13:4-7.

Personification gives inanimate things or abstractions the attributes of life and personality. The origin of the figure in the feeling of the writer we may gather from a few lines of Whittier's Snow-Bound.

We minded that the sharpest ear
The buried brooklet could not hear,
The music of whose liquid lip
Had been to us companionship,
And, in our lonely life, had grown

To have an almost human tone.

The figure evidently grows out of the author's sympathy with and love for nature and the inanimate world. It rouses in the reader the same sympathy and love, and therefore strengthens the writing. Moreover, it adds to the dignity of the passage, by raising a lower order of creation or an abstraction to the level of a living, thinking, willing being.

Personification is a sort of general metaphora comparison of some lower creature to a human being. Many metaphors and similes involve personification, because they, too, compare a lower creature to a human being. It is best to call the figure simile or metaphor when the comparison is specific instead of general; e. g. when pines are compared to kings, and are not simply given universal human attributes or characteristics. But the personification involved in this metaphor justifies the use later of the words feel, remind, see.

3. APOSTROPHE AND VISION

A figure often (not always) associated with personification is Apostrophe. This is the figure in which a writer or speaker addresses absent persons as though they were present, or inanimate things as though they could hear and understand. The address is figurative, not literal, because the person or thing addressed is not expected to hear; the writer exercises the imagination in making the address. Bryant's The Yellow Violet is an apostrophe to that flower. He has written, also, an apostrophe To the Fringed Gentian. These apostrophes involve personification, because the flowers are addressed as if they were human. Others are:

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!

A thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain.

No personification is involved in David's lament for Absalom:

Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!

A figure similar to apostrophe is Vision. An author uses vision when he declares that he sees objects not actually present before him. He employs this figure to bring the past or the absent vividly before himself and his readers or hearers.

Methinks I see it now that one solitary, adventurous vessel, the Mayflower of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a